It says right on the first page that the adventurers should hit level 12 during the adventure. When they rescued Allustan, I had his first words be "Welcome to level 12". At the end, when he told them to go visit his old mentor Harpell, he said "...and you'd better be level 13 when you go".
Just consider it adventuring bonuses.
Okay it's late and I'm a little tired. We just finished return to the whispering cairn. The adventrue ended with the PCs at 12th level. I'm looking at the SoLS and it's for 13th level characters. I'm confused.
I'm running into the same problem. My group is probably gonna finish Gathering of Winds next game and they just made level 12. They have presumably two encounters left which won't be enough to get them to 13. They skipped a few of the encounters getting to the seal, so I may give them the xp for the encounters even though they won't bother them once they make the Wind Dukes happy in the true tomb.
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There should be enough XP in Gathering of Winds for the PCs to reach 13th level. If there isn't, they should go on a side quest. The next adventrue's really tough... possibly the toughest in the entire campaign.
The intro to Spire of Long Shadows gives DMs an excellent distraction / sub-campaign to deliver more XP on the hoof to the PCs.
1) they have to get to Magepoint; and,
2) they should be bearing at least one piece of the Rod of Seven Parts with them.
IMC, I had the PCs find the 12" piece to the Rod in the first adventure. It was locked in a complex container that Alustan ultimately opened for them and asked them to bring it to Eligos for identifying and command words. They have used it twice. One free Hold Monster a day is not that big a deal... (the power of the 12" segment).
My players start AGoW next session. By the time A Gathering of Winds concludes, my PCs will find the 15" segment as well. Two pieces of the Rod of Seven Parts being found is a Sign of the Apocalypse and will attract heavy extra-planar attention. (plus grant a heal and a resonating fly at will power).
What this means in terms of gameplay is that with one (or two) pieces of the Rod of Seven Parts, a DM can justify a number of attacks by devils upon the party to try and seize the Rod - and expand on this as necessary over time to provide a neat recurring diversion together with some foes that the party can actually score a critical against :).
Get out your Fiendish Codex II and have some fun.
This should provide an opportunity for more varied encounters to deliver added XP to the party to get them up to 13th. This, in turn, should provide the PCs with the power to cast the anti-magic shells and the multiple death wards necessary to survive the Swords of Kyuss and the Invocation of the Worm.
I am doing prep work to run the AOW campaign for a party of 6, and a big part of my prep work is in trying to beef up encounters to make them more challanging for the larger party, and have sufficent xp available to maintain the advancement track, as I dont want to have to many side trek.
The other problem I'm having with the current party my players are proposing is, as it was for over 1/2 my SCAP campaign, there is no true wizard. Knowing my players (scap is in its 3d year so I know them well) they dont seem to see the light when it comes to craft feats or even purchasing wands and sometimes scrolls. I was preping Encounter at Blackwall Keep this weekend and the thought of a party going into battle sans 3lvl arcane spell access would be shaky at best.
My group started SoLS last night. I skipped the encounter with the devils due to having to bring in a new player/character in Magepoint (renamed Mystport in my Eberron version). The entire session ended with no fighting and my party of 6 is 12th level. Will they do OK with the rest of the adventure? Its a decently well-rounded party (sans Rogue of any kind): Druid/Master of Many Forms, Artificer, Fighter, Fighter/Sorcerer/Arcane Archer, Sorcerer, and Cleric/Exorcist of the Silver Flame.
The easiest way to ensure your group is 13th level before entering the Spire is to have them travel there by mundane means, rather than boat. Then you can put in enough side-trek type adventures / encounters without it actually being a diversion - it's just stuff that happens on the way.
I've posted about my own version of this a couple of times, most recently towards the bottom of this thread. To summarise, my group had to find out exactly where it was, which lead to a mini-adventure plus some random encounters in the jungles.
In fact, you might consider getting them to 14th level, it really can be a meat-grinder unless your players are cautious and well prepared for what's there.
Here's an easy solution. Don't use XP.
For a long time I have always sworn by XP, (I believe in earning what you get) but have always run into problems with some peopel advancing faster than others, or not advancing fast enough for the adventure. So after a lot of soul searching (not really) I decided to do away with XP.
We started AoW last week. In preparation I went through the whole WC module and made a flow chart of the encounters. Based on that flowchart I figured out the best place for all the PCs to level up. I am going to do this with each adventure so they are always at the right place.
For item creation feats, PCs will get a number of "item creation" points equal to 10% of the normal XP required for their level (and they get to start with 50 points at level 1). Much like Action points, these IC points can not be carried over from level to level. Use em' or lose em'
Speaking of Action Points, I _am_ using those. Since I am not giving XP, using Action points allows me to give players something as a reward for good roleplaying (sparingly). On top of the usual uses, PCs can also trade in Action Points for extra Item Creation points if need be.
Get rid of XP, and you remove a lot of DM stress. No more squabbling from players over every single XP, no more worrying about PCs not being high enough for the next adventure.
:-)
Honestly, this, I feel, is one of the big problems with all level-based game systems. Level disparity. Adventures are built around groups of X number of characters with levels ranging between Y and Z. If a series of adventures is designed that way, and your GMing style puts them above or below that range, there may be problems. The other level disparity problem comes from the idea of bringing a greenhorn (new adventurer) into the party. You can't throw a level 1 character in with a group of level 12 veterans and expect them to have any chance of survival. What gives a level 10 hero 10 times the live force (hit points) of a level 1 hero!? How can a level 10 hero shake off a 100' fall, while the level 1 guy might break his neck at 20'. I accept that these games are far from realistic, but the disparity has always been ridiculous.